Kirkland Everlasting
by IWantsRussia
Summary: Doomed to eternal life after drinking from a magic spring, the Kirklands wander about trying to live as comfortably as they can. When 16-year-old Alfred F. Jones stumbles upon their secret, the Kirklands take him and explain why living forever at one age is more a curse than a blessing. Problems arise when Alfred is followed by a stranger who wants to sell the spring for a fortune.
1. Chapter 1

**AN- Hello hello hello! I know that I'm still working on Thread Of Thoughts, but I had a great idea and I couldn't just leave it in my head to annoy me! So please do enjoy, loves!~**

_**Chapter 1- First week of August**_

The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring moons, and sunsets smeared with too much color. Often at night there is lightning, but it quivers all alone. There is no thunder, no relieving rain. These are strange and breathless days, the dog days, when people are led to do things they are sure to be sorry for after.

One day at a time, not so very long ago, three things happened and at first there appeared to be no connection between them.

At dawn, Scott Kirkland set out on his horse for the wood at the edge of the village of Hetalia. He was going there, as he did every ten years, to meet his two younger brothers, Arthur and Patrick.

At noontime, Alfred F. Jones, whose family owned the Hetalia wood, lost his patience at last and decided to think about running away.

And at sunset a stranger appeared at the Jones' gate. He was looking for someone, but he didn't say who.

No connection, you would agree. But things can come together in strange ways. The wood was at the center, the hub of the wheel. All wheels must have a hub. A ferris wheel has one, as the sun is the hub of the wheeling calendar. Fixed points they are, and best left undisturbed, for without them, nothing holds together. But sometimes people find this out too late.

**AN- Okay! I know this is short, but no worries! I'm getting chapter 2 done as I type! Review! They are my pencil to my paper! **


	2. Chapter 2- Touch-Me-Not Cottage

**AN- Oh my gosh! A review already?! Thanks to NekoMushi for reviewing, favoriting, and following! You get a homemade chocolate cookie!*gives cookie* Hope you like this chapter! I've been writing this for about a year now, and I've decided to upload it! That's why the chapters out so soon! Enjoy!~**

_**Chapter 2- Touch-Me-Not Cottage**_

The road that led to Hetalia had been trod out long before by a herd of cows who were, to say the least, relaxed. It wandered along in curves and easy angles, swayed off and up in a pleasant tangent to the top of a small hill, ambled down again between fringes of bee-hung clover, and then cut sidewise across a meadow. Here it's edges blurred. It widened and seemed to pause, suggesting tranquil bovine picnics: slow chewing and thoughtful contemplation of the infinite. And then it went on again and came at last to the wood. But on reaching the first trees, it veered sharply, swung out in a wide arc as if, for the first time, it had reason to think where it was going, and passed around.

On the other side of the wood, the sense of easiness disolved. The road no longer belonged to the cows. It became, instead, and rather ubruptly, the property of people. And all at once the sun was uncomfortably hot, the dust oppressive, and the meager grass along its edges somewhat ragged and forlorn. On the left stood the first house, a square and solid cottage with a touch-me-not appearance, surrounded by grass cut painfully to the quick and enclosed by a capable iron fence some four feet high which clearly said, "Move on-we don't want _you _here." So the road went humbly by and made its way, past cottages more and more frequent but less forbidding, into the village. But the village doesn't matter, except for the jailhouse and the gallows. The first house only is important; the first house, the road, and the wood.

There was something strange about the wood. If the look of the first house suggested you'd better pass it by, so did the look of the wood, but for quite a different reason. The house was so proud of itself that you wanted to make a lot of noise as you passed, and maybe even throw a rock or two. But the wood had a sleeping, otherworld appearance that made you want to speak in whispers. This, at least, is what the cows must have thought: "Let it keep it's peace; _we _won't disturb it."

Whether the people felt that way about the wood or not is difficult to say. There was some, perhaps, who did. But for the most part the people followed the road around the wood because that was the way it led. There was no road _through_ the wood. And anyway, for people, there was another reason to leave the wood to itself: it belonged to the Jones, the owners of the touch-me-not cottage, and was therefore private property in spite of the fact that it lay outside the fence and was perfectly accessible.

The ownership of land is an odd thing when you come to think of it. How deep, after all, can it go? If a person owns a price of land, does he own it all the way down, in ever narrowing dimensions, till it meets all other pieces at the center of the earth? Or does ownership consist of a thin crust under which the friendly worms have never heard of trespassing?

In any case, the wood, being on top- except, of course, for it's roots- was owned bud and bough by the Jones in the touch-me-not cottage, and if they never went in there, if they never wandered in among the trees, well, that was their affair. Alfred, the only child of the house, never went there, though he sometimes stood inside the fence, carelessly banging a stick against the iron bars, and looked at it. Nothing ever seems interesting when it belongs to you- only when it doesn't.

And what is interesting, anyway, about a slim few acres of trees? There will be a dimness shot through with bars of sunlight, a great many squirrels and birds, a deep, damp mattress of leaves on the ground, and all the other things just as familiar if not pleasant- things like spiders, thorns, and grubs.

In the end, however, it was the cows who were to be responsible for the wood's isolation, and the cows, through some wisdom they were not wise enough to know they possessed, were very wise indeed. If they had made their road threw the wood instead of around it, then the people would have followed the road. The people would have noticed the giant ash tree at the center of the wood, and then, in time, they'd have noticed the little spring bubbling up among its roots in spite of the pebbles piled there to conceal it. And that would have been a disaster so immense that this weary old earth, owned or not to it's fiery core, would have trembled on its axis like a beetle on a pin.


End file.
